Watching TV on web is disrupting cable, broadcast worlds

Miami Herald ^ | January 26, 2013 | Glenn Garvin

[PJ-Comix]

Veteran programmer Rob Barnett recently attended a breakfast meeting of television executives where the talk turned, as it almost always does these days, to “disruption,” the industry buzzword for the way new technology is upsetting the TV applecart. From somewhere down the table, he heard a question: “Has anybody here cut the cord?” — that is, dropped cable service in favor of just watching TV through the Internet? Barnett shrugged and raised his hand. “Mine was the only one,” he recalls. “But when it went up, I saw beads of sweat break out on the foreheads of some of the guys across the table.”

When Barnett and 5,000 or so others gather Monday for the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) convention at the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach, there will be plenty of sweaty foreheads, some acquisitive smiles and — perhaps most numerous — blank looks of confusion. Not since cable turned the old three-channel TV universe on its head in the late 1970s has the industry been in such a state of disoriented befuddlement.

New technologies that give viewers more say in what they watch, where they watch and how much they pay for it are great for consumers. But they’re inducing a collective nervous breakdown among industry executives, who have to figure out new ways to make money in a business facing serious threats to its traditional sources of revenue — advertising and cable-TV subscriptions.

[dennisw]

That is a great speed....Now snag your 12 month introductory rate for signing up for uverse. And try to get a 100$ gift card for leaving Comcast. Keep your last Comcast bills you get in the mail or print off the internet pdf of them before you close out Comcast account...then you cannot access them. They want your last Comcast bill to get the $100 incentive for leaving Comcast for Uverse

Uverse installation is 50-100 dollars

[UCANSEE2]

Thanks for the response.

After you go to VEETLE.COM , at the top , click on EXPLORE.

New headings will appear , and in about the same spot click on ALL.

Under that will be a list of choices. ENTERTAINMENT = movies and SHOWS = TV series programs.

Click on one of those, and ...there you go.

[bert]

Thanks...... did it

[csvset]

Looking for something that can run firefox, do wifi, and has enough Cpu to play streamed hidef video. It would be strictly for playing videos.

Don’t care what else it can do. It would have to have an HDMI out though. I have a Roku and that works fine. I need something that runs firefox so I can do noscript. That way I can watch all of my Tv shows ad free.

[Drew68]

I don’t get how this will ever be bad for cable companies. If they don’t sell enough cable tv subscriptions they’ll simply raise the cost of internet.

It won't be long before service providers start charging by the GBs downloaded, much like ISPs of old used to charge by the minute.

I'm about ready to cut off cable. I just don't watch more than an hour of cable TV in a month. With my two PS3s, I watch Netflix and Amazon Prime, my kids watch these as well as youtube videos and my wife watches Russian-language shows from a TVoIP console hooked up to the TV. The flip side is our home sucks up a lot of bandwidth that is subsidized by those other folks who use very little. As more and more people cut the cord, bandwidth is going to go through the roof!